Bill & Mary Bailey; Steve Bailey, Chatfield MN

The art of square dancing is in how smoothly a person moves
with their partner, moves away from that partner, and then moves back once
again to the home position. For Mary and Bill Bailey, that description is about
more than the dance. It’s about life.

Steve Bailey, left, with Mary and Bill Bailey

Initially, visits to the Mayo Clinic brought Mary and husband
Leonard to this area. “We just fell in love with the land and planned to retire
here, having found the ideal 58 acre piece of property in 1992,” said Mary. “We
established hiking trails and installed bluebird boxes, and finally moved to Chatfield
from Indiana in 2002. Sadly, Leonard died suddenly just 2 years after we moved
here. It was just devastating. I considered selling and moving back near
family. Instead, I got lots of help and good advice from neighbors and friends
and realized I couldn’t leave here.”

For Bill, who lost his first wife to cancer in 2006,leaving the area was never a
consideration. “My great-grandfather homesteaded near here in 1884. The land I
farm now with my brother Steve was bought by my grandfather in 1917, passed to
my dad, and then on to us. On our 2000 acres we raise corn, soybeans, alfalfa,
and a 200-head cow-calf herd. We also have 300 acres of woods that we manage,
along with some woods that the cows rotationally graze, though I never met a
cow that was much of a forester,” quipped Bill.

Mary watched a demo square dance during a local town
festival and contacted one of the dancers about lessons. “It seemed like a
good, safe way to meet people and socialize.” It also happened to be a good way
to meet a new partner for life. Bill and Mary were married in September, 2008,and continue to square dance three to
four times per week. So, how does this match made on the square dance floor end
up as the 2015 Minnesota Tree Farmers of the Year? It really began in Bill and
Steve’s childhood.

Growing up, I was always drawn to our woods. Of course, I
spent a lot of time doing fieldwork, but being in the woods was my favorite
thing to do,” said Bill. “When it came time to go to college, I decided I
already knew enough about farming, so I got a degree in forestry from the U of
M in 1971.” While Bill was still in college, he and Steve began to manage their
woods by more intensely logging some areas, creating more trails and hand
planting black walnuts. “In 1985, I wrote up our first real management plan. The
idea evolved to log 30 acres every year, which means we’re back in an area
every 10 years. We’re pretty aggressive in thinning and selecting crop trees.
Every year, our goal is to harvest 100,000 board feet,” said Bill. According to
Steve, “thinning is one of the best things you can do for the environment. A
young tree takes in more carbon dioxide than the fully mature trees, just like
a young man utilizes more nutrients compared to an old man.”

The Baileys have hosted field days on their property and have
a unique way to show the advantages of thinning. “One of my favorite things
I’ve shown people is a wedge I cut from a basswood we harvested in 2014,” said
Bill. The area around the tree was thinned in 1984 and again in 2000. Bill used
colored pins to show the impact of thinning on growth rate. The first 35 years
of growth resulted in 9% of the total volume of the tree. In the 16 years after
thinning in 1984, the tree added 26% of its total volume. Fourteen years of
growth from 2000 to 2014 resulted in 65% of the total volume. “Many woodland
owners are missing out on a great opportunity if they don’t thin their stands,”
said Bill. “You need to thin out that low-value tree in a timely manner to give
your more valuable ones room to grow!” Even though Bill has a forestry
background, he recommends building a relationship with a local forester. “DNR
forester Jim Edgar has really helped us a lot with advice and expertise, and
that would be even more important for someone new to forest management. It’s a
good investment to find a reputable forester to oversee your timber sale.”

Skidding timber.

With chainsaws, tractors, a Finnish-built PTO winch and
occasionally a rented skidder, Steve and Bill spend their winters in the woods,
thinning and harvesting a wide variety of species: black walnut, hard maple,
red, white and burr oak, red and gray elm, cherry, basswood, poplar, ash,
hackberry and cottonwood. “Keeping the forest healthy is kind of like healthy
eating,” said Steve Bailey. “No matter how good one food is, if you only eat that
one, it’s not going to be healthy. That’s why we have lots of different tree
species, because that’s more healthy.” Root River Hardwoods of Preston and
Albert Lea, MN, grades and marks the logs for length, with most of them going
to local Amish sawmills for pallet production. Premium logs are used for veneer,
flooring, barrel staves, and finish wood sold in commercial stores.

Mary Bailey is passionate about caring for bluebirds.

By the way, any article about the Baileys would be remiss if
it didn’t mention two other things. First, a large portion of the six-mile Lost
Creek Hiking Trail meanders through their land. Opened in October of 2011, the
trail is maintained by the Bluff Country Hiking Club, and the Bailey’s
cooperation and enthusiasm was crucial to the success of the project. Complete
with educational signs, the trail is a wonderful marriage of recreation and
forest education. Second, there’s this thing about Mary and bluebirds. For more
information on that, see the article on the Bluebird Recovery Program in this
issue.

For their efforts in conservation, public education, forest
improvement, and making their woodlands available to the public for
recreational activities, Steve Bailey, and Bill and Mary Bailey are certainly
worthy recipients of the Tree Farmer of the Year award and an inspiration to
all woodland owners.